Watched the Torchwood US premiere

[rivkat]

It's streaming on Starz in the US, though I've heard there are different scenes in the UK version.

I am mad. I try to avoid US law shows because they’re so wrong, and wrong in a consistently conservative direction, as if real-for-sure murdering/raping criminals get off all the time because of a “technicality.” Pro tip: a pedophile scheduled to die for killing one of his victims will not be released because the execution didn’t work, even if the execution “technically” went as planned.

He will not successfully sue the governor as an individual for his experience. His lawsuit, if any, will increase the governor’s popularity, because if it’s you v. murdering pedophile, you automatically look better. This situation will not put the governor at personal risk. The murdering pedophile’s threat to sue shouldn’t make a first-year law student blanch, much less an aide of sufficient experience to be delivering a message on behalf of the governor. (Yeah, if I were his lawyer, I’d file something, but it would fail, and “success” here is defined as resentencing, not as release. They are not going to parole a murdering pedophile even if he got a resentencing hearing scheduled. And they are not going to do it in two days, especially not while the rest of the world is falling apart.) And what the fuck was the word salad about “force majeure” in the bullshit explanation of why he was released? Contracts have force majeure clauses; criminal convictions do not. If you can’t create a sensible explanation of your plot point, that’s because it doesn’t make any fucking sense.

Jesus, American TV, find something else to be wrong about, okay? Because you’re really misleading people, and I’m sick of it, and it encourages the disregard for the real, live, far more limited, procedural protections that are there for really good reasons having to do with avoiding a state that can send you to jail just because someone powerful doesn’t like you.

I know for a fact Torchwood has some fantastic writers. If you want a pedophile/some people really need to die plot, have him come after the victim who successfully killed her way out of his grasp. Don't keep encouraging delusions about the law.

Comments

[ahab]

Ugh, right? I think it made me black out when I watched the first episoe, because it was only during the second episode that I'd realized they'd actually used force majeure as the basis for freeing him (all I had processed was the bullshit lawsuit threat, which: wtf!). And then I headdesked so hard again that hopefully I'll forget that ever happened.

You're not watching Suits, right? For the love of god, stay very far away from Suits, because OH MY GOD the legal fail.

[rivkat]

I have a general rule against watching legal shows. I accept that I'm therefore missing out on some good drama in The Good Wife and quite likely Damages, but my blood pressure won't take it. So Suits was off the table based only on the premise.

Force majeure: the explanation so terrible they used it twice! Just as logical to say "we freed the murdering pedophile because copyright infringement."

[ahab]

Ahahaha. Though at least if they'd said copyright, we'd know THEY know the bullshit they're peddling. Right now I think the show actually thinks this makes sense...